ArtPrize

With this job, you don’t always have a chance to write up all the exhibitions you saw and loved, so for me, the 2014 year-end review is a Godsend. It gives me a chance to give a shout out to everything I saw and loved. And this year, there was an awful lot of it. May 2015 be this bountiful and more.

ArtPrize is coming to Dallas. Yesterday, the Grand Rapids-based 501-c3 announced via email that they have entered into a three-year charter agreement to launch and oversee a new, independent non-profit named ArtPrize Dallas. Following the format of ArtPrize Grand Rapids, the event will be held in the city of Dallas for 19 days, and will offer up to $500,000 in cash prizes and grants to artists. ArtPrize Dallas is slated to launch in April 2016 with Executive Director Ariel Saldivar at the helm. Prior to this, she worked as the Associate Director of the Dallas-based Goss-Michael Foundation.

I spent a few days in Grand Rapids looking at the juried and public prize finalists at ArtPrize. ArtPrize describes itself as a radically open, independently organized international art competition and a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.Basically, it’s a city wide exhibition in which the public and a jury vote on their favorite art works. The top winner of the juried and public vote prize takes home $200,000. The top winner for category prizes takes home $20,000.
In case you’re wondering what I thought of the finalists, I spent a bit of time on TV talking about each of them. The winners, I haven’t weighed in on until now. A few thoughts:

“I put a giant 10-foot vagina in the world and people respond to giant 10-foot vaginas in the way that they do.” Carolina A. Miranda interviews Kara Walker on her Domino Sugar project. [Culture: High & Low]

As we mentioned yesterday, Karlheinz and Agnes Essl, founders of the Essl Museum, had 43 works from their private auction put up for sale at Christie’s last night. To be honest, sales “fell flat,” according to The Art Newspaper. That didn’t stop Christie’s from trying to sell works after the auction; the house sold Gerhard Richter’s “Net” straight after the auction close. I guess you can you do that? [The Art Newspaper]

Frieze opens its doors to VIPs today. Journos don’t have their write-ups ready, but we’ve learned that there’s a new section for performance called “Live.” [Twitter]

Can’t get enough Frieze news: Cory Arcangel and a Frieze staff member will perform a new piece by the artist, which is to download and watch Anchorman 2. Very Arcangel. Very ironic. Very 2000. *eyeroll* [@cory_arcangel]

Adult goths, bow down before this new review of NIN’s 1989 album Pretty Hate Machine. It’s been 25 years since the album’s original release, and the ensuing commodification of teenage angst. [The Quietus]

Beginning this December MoMA will present a 50-film screening of Robert Altman films. [Artsbeat]

“I think that humor is always a reaction to a feeling of impotence or despair, and for me the moment we are living in right now is very dark, with conflicts dividing people in a violent way and having an impact on culture and trade.” Camille Henrot on the relevance of humor in art. [Artspace]

Bloomberg Philanthropies has announced the creation of “Public Art Challenge,” a series of million-dollar grants to three cities in the United States to create temporary art projects that “celebrate creativity, enhance urban identity, encourage public-private partnerships and drive economic development.” Could this mean more cities hosting ArtPrize-inspired exhibitions? [Artsbeat]

Steve Lambert, a finalist in this year’s ArtPrize competition says that if he wins, he will donate the money to the LGBT Fund of Grand Rapids. That’s potentially a lot of money. He’s been nominated in both the public vote, and by the jury. The top prize for each is worth $200,000. Currently, he’s up for the $20,000 Time-Based Juried Award and the $200,000 Juried Grand Prize. (He’s now out of the running for the public vote prize.)

The boss was on TV, again! Once again, Paddy Johnson appears live from Grand Rapids to talk about the 2D and installation finalists at ArtPrize. We’ll spare you the recap this time, but Kevin Buist is getting good at TV moderating. Just watch it above. [WoodTV]

Wonkette has rounded up its favorite zingers from the Ninth Circuit Court’s decision to legalize gay marriage in Nevada and Idaho. Basically, the court calls governors and officials in Idaho and Nevada manipulative, hypocritical, and unusually cruel bigots. [Wonkette]

All you ever wanted to know about body piercing from Hannah Cherry, who considers the job her life calling. This comes with an image of her suspended from back piercings for a Jane’s Addiction concert. Her tips: don’t pick at it. [Brightest Young Things]

This is a weird pairing: GOOD Magazine features Art Spiegelman, who just produced a silent film, WORDLESSS!, of early wordless graphic novels, with and a six-piece band led by jazz saxophonist Phillip Johnson. The film debuts at BAM in January. He says that there are still magazines that find his work too risqué for their covers. [GOOD]

This makes me so glad I work for an art blog, where trolling mainly consists of people wanting to pound across their art opinions. Game developer Kathy Sierra writes about trolling that stems from wanting to see women getting what they “deserve”. Said trolls complain that Sierra misconstrues the facts. [Serious Pony]

Peter Schjeldahl approves of the Robert Gober’s MoMA show, which he calls “a crusade for visceral truth in art”. Prepare for extensive use of faucets and wax figures, to both beautiful and imposing ends. [New Yorker]

From my inbox: The Cooper Square Committee reports that East Village artists are among the many longtime tenants being pushed out of Allen Ginsberg’s old building. From the report:

In December of 2013, Jared Kushner purchased 170-174 East 2nd street buildings for $17 million, and quickly followed the purchase with the distribution of eviction notices to tenants of the two buildings. During the past nine months under the ownership of Kushner, tenants of both buildings were subjected to lengthy and severe construction work which has resulted in ceiling collapses, eroded floors, broken tiles, cut off gas service, and unannounced hot and cold water interruptions. Impacts on artists in the building range from fear of displacement, to damage of artwork, and compromised ability to do creative work under the stress and noise of construction.

Since Jared Kushner purchased the buildings at 170-174 East 2nd street, the Committee reports, 70 percent of its tenants have been vacated. Of the nine remaining tenants, about half are artists. Ironically, the building now boasts its “creative spirit” and history of housing artists as a draw. We’ll be watching this story. [Cooper Square Committee]

The boss was on TV! We’ll have a post on this soon, but you can watch Paddy Johnson on ArtPrize finalists, here. [WoodTV]

Documenta’s going to Athens in 2017. In all likelihood, this has no bearing on our travel plans. [artnet News]

Debbie Harry on Blondie T-shirts. Not much to say here, but she does give a shoutout to a superfan who’s been drawing cartoons of her for 25 years. [Vulture]

For his birthday, Vladimir Putin gets an art exhibition depicting him as Hercules. The Sochi Olympics is one of his twelve labors. Also, shooting down French war planes with a bow and arrow. [New York Magazine]

You don’t have to tweet all the time to be a good journalist, just like you don’t have to cover court cases and police activity, says New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet to Steve Buttry. [Steve Buttry via @brianstelter]

McKenzie Wark continues his comparison of artists to hackers. [e-flux]

In one of history’s surprises, the Marcos family has returned to the good graces of the Philippines government. Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos allegedly used stolen funds to amass an art collection, and now the government is hunting down the location of those works. So stolen money used to buy art that ends up being stolen. [Al Jazeera America]

Abdel Kader Haidara, the head of Timbuktu’s privately-funded Mamma Haidara Memorial Library, has received the German Africa Prize for putting his life at risk to save nearly half a million ancient manuscripts from Islamic extremists. He rescued those documents “for all of humanity”, he says, because the knowledge contained therein can never be recovered. [Deutsche Welle via Metafilter]

Woman gives birth with donated womb!!!!!!! A 35-year-old woman with a congenital absence of a uterus has given birth with a womb donated from a 61-year-old woman, according to a paper published by The Lancet. [The Lancet via Metafilter]

Startup investors like Snoop Dogg and Jared Leto (really) gave Reddit $50 million in funding. The barebones, community-oriented site won’t have ads. [Marketplace Tech]

Cancel whatever you’re doing at 7 PM tonight, readers. Paddy Johnson will be critiquing the finalists of ArtPrize, in the 3D and time-based categories. (Peruse the finalists here. Watch the Livestream here.) The stakes are high; we expect some animated debate to light up twitter tonight.

And the rest of the week looks equally promising: fashion snarker Simon Doonan talks menswear, the New York Film Fest continues, and Philadelphia’s Vox Populi Gallery sees a weekend filled with Videofreex, Jeanine Oleson, and Jaimie Warren.

Will technology save us, or kill us all? In her latest on artnet News, Paddy Johnson takes a close look at Daniel Levya’s show at Interstate Projects, where he has created a technological heaven and hell. The show sounds beautiful, with cathedral windows, plinths for iPads and demonic, flapping angel wings. [artnet News]

Speaking of Paddy, tonight she will critiquing the finalists at ArtPrize, one of (if not, the) world’s largest art prize. Over livestream, Johnson and fellow experts will be reviewing 3D and time-based juried finalists, whom, as it turns out, were chosen by a mix of public vote and experts including Hyperallergic’s Hrag Vartanian. Will she approve of his choices? Tune in tonight at 7 PM for some debate! [Artprize livestream]